Coo Zone Media.
On August tenth, nineteen eighty nine, around nine thirty pm, a white sedan pulled up outside the United Nations Transition Assistance Groups administrative headquarters in Autyo, a town in northern Namibia. They had what appeared to be UN issued license plates and the United Nations emblem was painted on the side, so perhaps it didn't look out of place there at first. Initial reports say witnesses saw three men dressed in green
camouflage uniforms. The UN Transition Assistance Group had arrived in Namibia four months earlier, authorized by UN Resolution four thirty five. The resolution had actually been adopted over a decade earlier, but it took that entire decade to get all parties to.
Come to the table.
The Transition Assistance Group was there to ensure the sea fire was honored, that South African troops would withdraw from Namibia, and that the upcoming election would be free and fair. Those first four months had not been without incident, but a ceasefire was re established Over the summer. The South African military was withdrawing s planned and UN officials were making progress on disarming and disbanding the citizen militias. Paid
by the South African government. If things continued on this path, it was looking good for the November elections. But not everyone was on board with UN Resolution four thirty five. One small group in particular, calling itself Axi Kontra four three five Action against four thirty five, did just what the name implies.
They took action.
When those men in green camos stepped out of their car outside the UN offices in Autyo that night. They opened fire with automatic weapons hand grenades caused extensive damage to the buildings, both the administrative offices and the sleeping quarters. A security guard named Michael Hoseg was killed in the attack, but the men fled into the night without finishing the mission.
The entire cell was arrested fairly quickly, and authorities found a massive arsenal of guns and explosives the group planned to use in future attacks on United Nations targets with the goal of stopping the upcoming elections. And those men were in custody in November when the elections were held, but they didn't stay there.
They escaped.
They'd failed to prevent Namibian independence, but now the fight was in South Africa and they would do everything in their power to prevent the end of apartheid. I'm Molly Kunger, and this is where there were GUIDs. This is still the story of Monica Huggett Stone, the elderly South African woman who was living in Mandeville, Louisiana, when she organized
a series of nationwide Nazi rallies in twenty twelve. But she isn't in this part of the story because I can't tell you about the international network of mercenaries she was organizing in nineteen ninety four without telling you a little bit more about some of those men, who they were and what they were up to in the years leading up to that deadly shootout with the police on the eve of the South African elections. I know I
don't have to make excuses for this meandering narrative. It's my story, and I'll tell it the only way I know how. I never know where we're going when I start putting my notes together, and I really can't help but chase down this seemingly infinite number of surprisingly deep rabbit holes. And I'm so fascinated by this international network.
It's come up a bit in other stories.
Dennis Mahon and Tom Metzger had close ties with Heritage Front in Canada. In the early nineties, Denis Mayhon flew to Germany to show German neo Nazis a good old fashioned American ku Klux Klan cross burning, and he gave fiery speeches stoking the flames of the anti immigrant riots
that were exploding across Germany at the time. The week before Dennis started making that bomb that he went to prison for, he'd been hanging out with an Ulster unionist who'd carried up bombings in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. British Holocaust denied David Irving traveled regularly to the United States to network with American white supremacists. Frank Sweeney joined the American Nazi Party in New Jersey as a teenager
and later joined the Rhodesian Army as a mercenary. Members of American white supremacist groups like the Base, Adam Waffen, and the Rise Above movement and its spin off active clubs, have a particular fondness for traveling to Ukraine to fight with far right groups like the azof Battalion. Patriot Front. Flags have popped up at Neo Nazi marches and Poland and its members have met with leaders of foreign fascist groups like the Nordic Resistance Movement in Sweden and Cossa.
Pound in Italy.
One of the young men arrested in connection with the Terogram Collective was taken into custody at the airport before he could board a flight to Ukraine to join the Russian Volunteer Corps. The fascists, racists, and anti Semites of the world are obsessed with borders, but they don't seem to mind crossing them. So that's what we're exploring here.
And we'll find Monica again in the next chapter of this story when she does a bit of border crossing of her own, but that's not until nineteen ninety four, and right now it's nineteen eighty nine. In nineteen eighty nine, South Africa was still five years away from ending apartheid, five years away from holding their first election with universal suffrage, five years away from electing Nelson Mandela as their first
post apartheid president. In nineteen eighty nine, Nelson Mandela was still in prison, where he'd been since nineteen sixty two. But in nineteen eighty nine, one of South Africa's neighbors was taking the leap into multi racial democracy.
Well.
Whether or not South Africa considered Namibia to be a neighboring country or a country at all, depends on who you ask. The present day nation of Namibia had been a German colony from eighteen eighty four until nineteen fifteen. During World War One, when everyone was a little preoccupied elsewhere,
South Africa captured the colony known as Southwest Afria. In nineteen sixty six, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution declaring that South Africa no longer had a right to the territory, but South Africa continued illegally occupying the area that the United Nations now recognized as Namibia. The conflict lasted over two decades. The South African Border War wasn't just about South Africa's desire to extend apartheid into
this colonial territory. It was inextricably intertwined with other conflicts in the region, things like the Angle and Civil War. It was a modern consequence of the nineteenth century Scramble for Africa. It was the unraveling of a century of colonialism. It was fueled by Cold War anxiety about communist guerrilla forces and Soviet influence, and it was about white anxiety. If Black Africans were allowed to participate in government, if they were, god forbid, allowed to rule their own nations,
what would they do with that power. The whole world got in on the action, both officially, with major powers sending material support to their preferred parties, and none officially, with independent mercenaries and shadowy state sponsored operations popping up all over Sub Saharan Africa. But by nineteen eighty nine it was finally time. The border war was over and Namibia was going to have free and fair elections in November. In April of that year, peacekeeping forces from the United
Nations Transition Assistance Group arrived to oversee the process. Namibia was going to be an independent nation, one without apartheid, and this was a frightening prospect for those white South Africans trying desperately to hold onto power in an increasingly unsustainable form of government. Now this next part might sound like a conspiracy theory. I try to tread waters like
this with immense care. I nearly drove myself to madness trying to thread the needle of fact, fiction and question marks. When I talked about the Oklahoma city bombing a while back, and when I started poking around this particular history, I'll admit I didn't have a lot of context.
I don't know the landscape here.
So sorting fact from speculation and sifting out the lies as a tricky prospect, And at first I completely dismissed the idea that these neo Nazi terrorists could have been acting on government orders. That's tinfoil hat territory, right. I saw the idea heavily insinuated in some reporting from.
The time period.
An article published in nineteen ninety in an issue of Frei Vigblad, a South African newspaper with an anti apartheid stance, opened with this fairly explosive allegation. They are fugitives accused of murder. They come from South Africa, Britainbia and Zimbabwe. They have one common characteristic. They left a trail of destruction, death and bloodshed in Southern Africa over the past decade,
but cannot be prosecuted. They are among the most wanted men in our neighboring states, but enjoy the protection of the South African government because they have worked or still work for the security forces.
But that's not prove right.
Think about how often you see similar sentiments expressed when it comes to American far right groups. Allegations that this group or that one, or whichever prominent white supremacist leader hasn't been prosecuted because they're being protected by the state, And that's always a possibility, sure, but that doesn't mean it's true. But some of those men would themselves later claim that they couldn't be prosecuted for murders and bombings
because they'd been acting on government orders. And again that's not proof. I've seen that before too. Sometimes people will say anything to avoid responsibility, and that doesn't necessarily mean it's true. I'd been chugging along, accumulating sources and taking my notes, translating old newspapers. I subscribed to several South African genealogical databases. I was really getting into the weeds here, all under the assumption that there wasn't really a need
to explore that angle. It could be true, but it wasn't something I'd be able to substantiate, And it's the kind of thing I'm not comfortable exploring without something to hold on to. I don't want to abuse your trust by speculating wildly and getting reckless with the facts. But then I realized this is a very unusual set of circumstances. Normally a government would never admit to state sponsored terrorism.
They all do it, but nobody admits it. And if you ever do prove it, it's nothing short of a miracle. You need leaked documents and deathbed confessions. But the South Africa of nineteen ninety five wasn't really the same South Africa that had existed until nineteen ninety four. This government wasn't admitting to its own crimes. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was an unusually transparent look at the nation's past,
and they admitted it. There is an entire chapter of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission final report called secret State Funding, and according to the report, Oxe Kontra four thirty five, the group behind the attack at the UN offices in Autio in nineteen eighty nine is believed to have been
entirely creation of funded by the South African government. At least one of the men involved was later confirmed to have been an operative of the South African Civil Cooperation Bureau, an odd name for what was essentially government sponsored death squads, and I tell you that now so you can draw your own conclusions later in the story when things get a little murkier. So just keep that in the back
of your mind for now. It wasn't long after the attack on Autyo that members of Axi Kontra four thirty five started getting arrested. Although the group's name disappears from the conversation pretty quickly, the men who carried out that attack were members of other groups too. Specifically, they were all members of the African or Resistance movement, the AWB led by Eugene terre Blanche. The first to be arrested were two South African citizens, Arthur Archer and Craig Barker,
and a German mercenary named Horst Cleans. South Africans Darrell Stopped Fourth and Leonard Vnendahl were arrested soon after. By October of nineteen eighty nine, two months after the attack in Autyo, five men had been arrested. Charges against Craig Barker were dropped early on, and the charges against Arthur Archer were dropped after he agreed to cooperate, And so in December of nineteen eighty nine, it's just three Nandal, Cleanse and stopped fourth were officially charged with murder in
a Namibian court. The courthouse was a three hour drive from the prison where the men were being held. After the hearing, Leonard Venendal asked to use the bathroom before they were loaded back into the transport van to return
to their cells. And this is one of those moments where it's useful to bear in mind that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission names Leonard Venandal as a known operative of the Civil Cooperation Bureau, those government sponsored death squads, and he's named as an operative of the CCB specifically in connection with these events in Namibia. So with that in mind, Leonard Vnandal goes to the bathroom at the courthouse and he somehow knows to take the top off
the tank of a particular tur toilet. Someone had left him a gift in there, a pistol, and he takes the gun out of the toilet and he tucks it away and he allows himself to be placed back in the van. About three quarters the way through the drive back to the jail, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, the men insisted that they just couldn't hold it any longer. They needed to stop to go to the bathroom, and
the two Namibian police officers agreed. They pulled over and they led their three prisoners out to pee on the side of the road, and then suddenly another vehicle appeared. It stopped and two men got out, and Vinadel produced the pistol from his hiding place, and the two officers were overpowered by the three prisoners and their two accomplices. Constable Ricardo van Wick was shot in the stomach and
later died. The surviving officer was forced at gunpoint into the back of the van, which the prisoners drove half an hour off the main road before abandoning it. And then they disappeared in the vehicle driven by their accomplices, And they really did disappear. Darrel stopped fourth, Leonard Fienandal and Horse Glens had murdered a UN security guard and an Amibian police officer. They were supposed to have gone on trial in Namibia, but they vanished for a little
while anyway. Just a few short months later, both Leonard Feenandal and Daryl stopped Forth came out of hiding. They were home in South Africa and South Africa had no extradition treaty with the newly independent nation of Namibia. There were warrants for their arrest there, but there was nothing anyone could really do. Benadal said in a public statement a few months after his escape, I have now returned to my family and I'm going to devote myself full
time to the cause as the revolution is here. A photo of Nadal taken around that time shows him wearing his AWB uniform and holding his newborn son. He'd named the boy Daryl, presumably to honor Darrel's top fourth, the man he'd just committed two murders with.
And there's an.
Odd thing I keep seeing these guys do as I'm researching this story. They have this strange fondness for giving interviews when they're supposed to be in hiding on the run from the law. When it was announced in September of nineteen eighty nine, a month after the attack and aut Yo, that Leonard of Nadal had been arrested, a reporter in South Africa came forward with a pretty wild story.
While Venadel had been on the run, he'd taken the time to sit down for a two hour interview with a reporter and In that interview, he spoke openly about his membership in the AWB. That fact alone wasn't really a secret. He was Eugene Tablanche's personal bodyguard, and he was the leader of the Johannesburg branch of the group.
But he also claimed there had been a split within Aquala, the militant arm of a WB, with some members openly declaring their willingness and intent to die for the cause, forming a sort of Kamakazi unit that planned to carry out high profile assassinations.
He also showed the.
Reporter a small circular placard of sorts with a picture of a wolf. The reporter, yuhung Kus, just looked at it with disbelief, and he said, there's no such thing as the White Wolves, and Vinard all smiled at him and replied, believe me, they exist.
The White Wolves.
Probably didn't exist, not really, not then anyway, not in any way that really means anything.
Yes, they kind of did, in the.
Sense that if someone were to carry out a series of bombings and then call the newspaper to say that the White Wolves did it, he sort of retroactively created the idea of a group that could be imagined to exist, because NANDL would later be connected to an attempt to do just that. But by most accounts, the White Wolves
wasn't a terrorist organization that actually existed. But in September of nineteen eighty nine, as he's sitting there with this reporter from the Sunday Times, everyone in South Africa had heard of the White Wolf, at least in the singular. Earlier that year, a former policeman who called himself the White Wolf had been sentenced to death. He was a former policeman because he'd been dismissed a year earlier after opposing for a photo holding the severed head of a
black man who had died a gruesome car accident. He tried to submit the photo for publication in a police magazine, but they declined to publish it. He'd joined a to w B at just sixteen with his father's support and encouragement. He'd been sentenced to die for something he did. In November of nineteen eighty eight, one afternoon, a twenty three year old named Baron Stredam put on his custom belt
buckle engraved with the words White Wolf and Afrikaans. He barked his car near a busy City Square in downtown Pretoria, and he got out and he started walking, and then he started shooting. On the day of the massacre, he just walked for several blocks, just shooting black people at random. He murdered eight people and wounded sixteen others, and every survivor says the same thing. He smiled the entire time.
Bradley Stein was just seventeen years old that day and he was on his way home from rugby practice when he saw Stridem. He didn't understand at first what he was looking at.
This man with a.
Gun must be a police officer, He must be trying to catch a bad guy. But then he saw Stridem walk up to an old woman carrying groceries, and without saying a word, Stridem shot her in the head. At that moment, a black teenager called out to Stein, beckoning him over to the bench he was hiding behind, and the two teens hid behind the bench together, but Stridem found them. He shot the black boy. As Steyne, who's white,
cradled this bleeding stranger in his lap. He looked up at Stridem and asked him why.
Then I turned up to him and I said, who kom duniad why are you doing this? And he said, I said, I don'd it for it two cooms for wet Sit Africa corners, which means I'm doing this for the future of white South Africans.
Stritum never fired at a white person. The shooting only stopped with a black taxi driver, a man named Simon Mucondeley, tapped Stritum on the shoulder while he was reloading. He must have caught the killer off guard because as Stridum turned round, Mucondeley was able to grab the gun out of his hands. As I was reading about Stridem's murders, it felt so familiar to me. I've read accounts of a lot of mass shootings. I've seen videos I wish
I could forget. I've wasted countless hours reading manifestos, and there are plenty of similarities between white supremacist mass shootings. There are a lot of common denominators when it comes to a young white man who carries out a racist mass shooting. But this felt so terribly, eerily familiar to me. It was inescapable. It felt just like the Charleston church shooting.
It felt like Dylan Roof and back in twenty fifteen, several South African journalists covering that story that American shooting referred to Dylan Rufe as America's white Wolf. So I guess I'm not alone in that feeling. We talked briefly last week about the apartheid era South African flag patch in photos of roof taken shortly before he murdered nine people at the Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in twenty fifteen.
So we know he had a fondness for apartheid, but I wonder if he was familiar with the white Wolf. So in Venadela is sitting there with this reporter showing him this little picture of a wolf.
This is what he's talking about.
He's telling the reporter that he's a member of this extremely militant, violent arm of the AWB, that they're planning to get a race war going before Christmas, and he really wants the paper to run a story that will convince people that there are hundreds more Barren Stritums out there lying in wait. And the reason the reporter didn't believe him is because it had been discussed extensively during
Stritem's trial just a few months earlier. There was no reason to believe any actual group called the White Wolves existed. He was a member of AWB, that was fairly certain, But when it came to the White Wolves, it appeared to just be a pack of one. Finandel was maybe just planting seeds of propaganda. He was trying to capitalize on this intense fear and trauma surrounding Stritem's murders by
convincing people it could happen again at any time. But Leonard Fienentdal had been telling the truth about at least one thing when he spoke to that reporter. Before his arrest, there had been some splintering within the Africaner Resistance movement. Members of a w B had started forming increasingly violent breakaway groups, groups like the Orde Vandi Dude, which translates to the Order of Death and the Order Borfolk the Order of the Boer People. And that name might sound familiar.
A violent fascist group calling itself the Order, We've heard that one before. Its founder would later say that he'd never actually heard of Robert J. Matthews, the American neo Nazi who founded a group called The Order in nineteen eighty three. It seems both men arrived at the name independently, but for the exact same reason. It was the name of the fictional white supremacist organization in William Luther Pierce's
novel The Turner Diaries. And you might remember the name of the man who founded the South African version of the Order. Remember last week we were talking about the trial of Massimo Bolo and Fabiomiello, the Italian fascist convicted of the vit Commando bombings in nineteen eighty. As the two men were led into the court room on the first day of their trial, one man in the gallery stood up and applauded for the bombers. And that man
was pretorious city councilor Pete Rudolph. And so by this point in our timeline, Rudolph is a high ranking member of the africaner resistance movement, the AWB, and Pete Rudolph maintains to this day that he founded the Order in nineteen eighty nine with the knowledge and blessing of AWB's leader, Eugene are Blanche, specifically so that AWB members could engage in more violent resistance without risking AWB itself being sanctioned
or banned. And if that's true, it's actually quite similar in that respect to the group of the same name in the United States. When Robert Matthews founded the Order, he did so with the knowledge and blessing of William Luther Pierce, announcing the formation of the group in a speech at the annual meeting of Pierce's National Alliance. And National Alliance benefited ideologically and financially from the Order's crimes, but they had the plausible deniability of having no formal
affiliation with the group. Just like Pierce, a National Alliance, Terre Blanche and the AWB could sit back and enjoy the political benefit of their orders act of terror without the risk of appearing to have authorized them. The Order Boro Folk was definitely founded and led by Pete Rudolph, but press clippings over the years occasionally name other men as the group's leader. At one point, Nick Stridem, the father of mass murderer Baron Stritem, is quoted as the
head of the US Order. In nineteen ninety four, a South African TV news program aired an interview with a man claiming to be the leader of the Order. I was perhaps as surprised as Pete Rudolph was to see
Leonard Vnandhal staring back at me from the screen. Rudolph would later tell the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Venandal had appointed himself as chief of Staff of the Order without his permission, and that such a position didn't even exist, And he called Venandal quote a man fond of publicity with strong national socialist inclinations. And he scoffed at the very idea that he would have let Vnondal lead anything, disparagingly referring to Venondal's habit of appearing in public in
a khaki uniform, saying, I despise a khaki uniform. Let me tell you, because khaki is the color of the British.
But I guess the fashion.
Police unit of the Nazi terror squad is really neither here nor there. No one denies Venandal was a member of the Order. In fact, when Venandal, Cleans and stopped Forth had escaped from custody in Namibia, it had been the Order who picked them up on the side of the road there next to the still bleeding policemen. The man driving their getaway car was Rudolph's chief deputy, Hank Bradenhan.
Rudolph claims the Order was formerly established in October of nineteen eighty nine, but they didn't announce their presence to the world until February of nineteen ninety, when a small group of quote suspicious looking white men vandalized the British embassy in Pretoria. Witnesses saw them walk up to the embassy gates and spray paint in Afrikaans. The struggle begins and they signed the statement Order. Borofolk police looked at the graffiti and said they'd never heard of the group.
One member spoke anonymously with the press and said they were allied with the White Wolves. In April of nineteen ninety, the Order Boro Folk took its first big step. Pete Rudolph organized and led a raid on a South African Air Force base, carried out in collaboration with three young A Tobb sympathizers within the Air Force. Order members, including Leonard Wienendahl, stole a busload of guns and ammunition from
the South African Defense Force. Rudolph called the Pretoria News while on the run to take credit for the heist, saying it was time for war. Quote, I have now crossed the rubicon. The Boer now have a chance to arm themselves. We are now going for the a n c's throat. And keep those guns in the back of your mind too. I'll remind you, but one of those
guns shows back up. In June, Rudolph recorded a half hour long video declaring war against the government, and he mailed copies to several news outlets as well as other right wing groups. I could only find a short clip of it. I don't know why it looked so hard for the full video. It wouldn't have done me any good. It's all in Afrikaans, but still frames from the video show Rudolph sitting at a desk flanked by masked men
carrying rifles they'd stolen from the military. And the message was part press release, part warning, part call to action. He's speaking to a variety of audiences here and for his fellow African or nationalists. His message was pretty simple. It's not time to talk anymore and it is quote better to die in glory than to live in disgrace. Within days of this video's release, the bombs started going off. In late June and early July nineteen ninety bombs went
off every night. A bomb went off at a bus terminal in Johannesburg. Injuring nearly thirty people. Bombs went off at both the home and business belonging to Clive Gilbert, a Johannesburg City councilor who was both Jewish and a member of the Democratic Party. That same week, a synagogue in Johannesburg was bombed and defaced with swastikas and pro apartheid slogans. The office of the National Union of Mine Workers, a radical black labour organization, was destroyed by a bomb
that went off overnight. A bomb blew out the windows of the offices of the anti apartheid weekly newspaper Frei Vigblad, and the homes and offices of several members of the ruling National Party were targeted as well, accompanied by warnings that President day Clerk must stop all efforts to adopt moderate reforms. And then the phone calls came. Two phone calls to the offices of a pro government newspaper. The
first caller spoke English, not Afrikaans. A day later a second call came in to the same paper, and this caller spoke Afrikaans, but he used the code word the reporter had given the previous caller to ensure he was speaking with the same group. Both callers told the newspaper that the White Wolves were responsible for the bombings and that the bombings would continue if their demands weren't meant. Their primary demand was pretty straightforward. They wanted President to
Clerk to call an election. His moves towards reform and concessions and negotiations with the ANC, and his recent release of Nelson Mandela. These things were unacceptable, and they wanted the opportunity to elect a better white president. But the
group had two other strangely specific requests. They wanted the White Wolf himself, Baron Stridum, released from prison, and they wanted the police to call off the man hunt for Pete Rudolph, who was at this time still on the run after claiming responsibility for stealing all those guns from the military and then sending the government a videotaped declaration
of war. But like I said, the White Wolves almost certainly didn't exist, not in nineteen ninety, not as an actual organized group, whatever that means for a group that didn't exist, though they were very busy in nineteen ninety. In February, shortly after Nelson Mandela was released from prison, letters threatening to assassinate him were received by newspapers, and
those letters were signed the White Wolves. In May, when President Declark announced another round of apartheid reforms, including the repeal of the law that segregated libraries, the White Wolves put out a press release warning the president to watch his back. In May of nineteen ninety three black activists with the African National Congress were run off the road by two white men. Prince Makina and Simon Koba were murdered, but Xavier Liquote survived to testify.
He says before one.
Of the white men started shooting at them, he'd ask if they'd heard of the White Wolves.
Lequote said he replied that he.
Had, and just before opening fire, the man looked down at them and said, I'm going to show you just who the White Wolves are. And now in July, the White Wolves are claiming responsibility for most, though not all, of the bombs that had been going off every night for a week. It's possible that some of the other incidents involving people claiming to be the White Wolves were just people doing what Leonard Biinendal had done with that reporter. They were pretending they were acting on their own or
in connection with some other group. But they liked the way it sounded to say they were the White Wolves. They understood the kind of fear it would inspire and the kind of plausible deniability it would give their actual group affiliation for whatever they'd done. And more importantly, they wanted to honor the White Wolf Baron Stretum. I see a lot of parallels here between the way Stritum's murders so quickly achieved this almost religious significance and the way
modern terogram culture canonized as mass shooters. I didn't realize they'd been doing that for so many decades. I don't know that it was ever conclusively proven who was actually behind every instance of someone claiming to be the White Wolves, but in at least one of those cases, we knew exactly who it was. The men who murdered Prince Makina and Simon Coba in May of nineteen ninety was Peter Grinevald, son of General Teiney Grunevald, South Africa's head of military intelligence.
Peter Grunivald fled the country after the murders, and he spent years hiding in Portugal. When he was finally brought to justice. He testified that at the time of the murders, he had been an employee of the Civil Cooperation Bureau, just like Leonard Wienenthal. I'm not sure with conclusion to draw here, but the only two people I can say with conclusive proof were telling people that the White Wolves were real. Both turned out to be members of state
sponsored death squads. But when it comes to those bombings in July, the police knew it wasn't the White Wolves because they knew it was members of the AWB, know more specifically that it was members of the closely aligned splinter group, the Ordered Bora Folk. There are a lot of reasons why we know that to be true, but just in case, here's Pete Rudolph himself saying it in an interview last year.
We blew up National Party offices, we attacked some of the trade unions, and it was becoming an open war. And this was under the flag of the Order bouer Vault.
Under the Order Bafowk, which was started on the tenth of October eighteen eighty nine in Connivance and with the assistance of the AWB.
All three of the men who bombed those UN offices in Namibia in nineteen eighty nine, had appeared in South Africa by mid nineteen ninety, and all three were actively involved in the Order's bombing campaign that summer, and when the police started making arrests in July of nineteen ninety, Horse Cleans, Darryl Stopped Fourth and Leonard Fienendal were three of the ten men detained in connection with the bombings.
All ten of those men had ties to AWB. Several would later testify that they'd also been members of the Order of Death, a group that required members to commit a random, unprovoked murder as an act of initiation. Now I'm gonna be honest with you, I don't know what happened next. I tried so hard to sort this out. I love a day by day timeline, but I think there are a lot of factors complicating things here. I mean,
first of all, it was thirty five years ago. Not every piece of news has been archived and digitized, and there's probably reporting out there that I just can't access. And there are still the issues I talked about last week when it comes to locating source material in a foreign language with naming conventions and cultural context that I just don't have. I've noticed a surprisingly casual attitude towards
spelling and nicknames. I mean, it was incredibly common across all of my sources for this story for someone's name to be spelled a handful of different ways, pretty interchangeably, sometimes even within the same article. And it seems like it might be normal in Afrikaans to refer to a particular individual using their full name, or just their first and middle initial with their last name, or some kind of nickname, even in very formal writing, again totally interchangeably.
It took me a week to realize that KOs is a nickname for Jacobis and one guy might be written about both ways from sentence to sentence.
I don't know.
Maybe this is cultural, I have no idea, but it really complicates the process of looking for information. I've also noticed dates are often wrong, I mean a lot, like markedly provably wrong, just not consistent from source to source, sometimes just offering information that isn't possible. I mentioned last week that some of the dates in the Truth and
Reconciliation Report are definitely not correct. Things like the year the BIT commando trials took place are pretty easy to corroborate with newspaper archives, and it happens over and over again. The bombing of the Frei Week Blot office is widely reported in later sources to have occurred in nineteen ninety one.
The paper's own.
Editor, Max Duprees even puts the date as nineteen ninety one in his memoirs, but.
That's not true. He spoke to a reporter.
From The London Times about the bombing the day after it happened in July of nineteen ninety and Dubray's writes in his book that Leonard Vnendhal had confessed to having planted that bomb, which again could not have happened in nineteen ninety one because Leonard Venondal was in prison in nineteen ninety one, and the confession in question is actually very well documented because Venondal would later testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he'd only confess to that
bombing because police interrogators had electrocuted his testicles in July of nineteen ninety. So sorting out a day by day timeline, which is again my preferred strategy, really just wasn't possible here. There is no consistently reliable source when it comes to when a particular event actually happened. And I'm not kidding about that, the bit about Vnondal claiming to have been tortured. He applied to testify before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
not as a purportuse, but as a victim. He offered testimony about abuse he'd suffered after his arrest in July of nineteen ninety.
I then experienced being shocked. Then the current would come through my legs, through my armpun through my gentiles. Sometimes they would come all three together. While this was going, he shout at me, why don't I call my God to release me from the chain.
That clip comes from one of the weekly hour long broadcasts that aired every Sunday from nineteen ninety six through nineteen ninety eight. Every week South Africans could tune in for the Truth and Reconciliation Special Report, a compilation of clips from the hearings that was presented by Max Dupries, the newspaper editor whose office Mean and All admitted to bombing, and Dupriez ends that segment of the show with his own commentary, I'm.
Looking forward to mister Finnandah's amnesty, education hearing, and perhaps are Departments of Justice and Foreign Affairs of the public and explanation why he has not been sent back to themobia to stand trial.
But back to the question of the missing facts, perhaps the biggest factor here is that some of this information just isn't there to find. And I don't mean it's missing from the archives. I mean it doesn't exist. These final years of the apartheid regime were chaotic. Someone might get arrested for terrorism and then there just isn't ever
any follow up. I may be searching for answers that aren't there, because sometimes Copps would round up a bunch of guys and put a story in the newspaper, and then I don't know, they just aren't in jail anymore and there's never any more to the story. Sometimes people escaped two members of the Order Boro Folk definitely did. And sometimes people were quietly released because they secretly worked for the government. And during this time period especially, the
government had a strategy of politically targeted amnesty. As part of this effort to cool tensions and advanced negotiations, there were these occasional releases of political prisoners. They just pick a few guys on both sides of the conflict and let them go. And unlike the later, more organized and thoughtful process of granting amnesty through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, this at least to me, I could be wrong here,
but this looked a little haphazard. It doesn't look like these early nineties amnesty releases really involved any sort of long process of thoroughly accounting for what actually happened and documenting the specifics and getting statements on the record, getting people to admit.
What they'd done.
They just sort of let people go. And one of the more egregious instances of this was the release of Baron Stritum in nineteen ninety two. The men who laughed as he shot pedestrians at random, had served just four years, and the release of political prisoners was a part of the ongoing negotiations between the National Party administration and the
African National Congress. Both sides were getting some of their people out of prison, and the A and C seemed generally supportive of the strategy, but not when it came to Baron Stritum. Cyril Ramaposa, the current President of South Africa, was the A and C General secretary back in nineteen ninety two, and he issued their statement condemning the decision.
Our prisoners will not go out and commit these acts again, he said, But there's no guarantee that the prisoners who hate black people will not come out and shoot more black people. Baron Stredam didn't carry out another mass shooting after his release, not that I'm aware of, but he did continue to support and encourage far right violence. Shortly after his release, Australian journalist Alan Hogan interviewed Stritam about the murders on camera, not in a studio or his
living room. No, the interview took place as the pair walked together along the path that Stridam had taken that day, and he's pointing out the locations, each spot where he took a human life, and he's laughing, and he enthusiastically agrees that, Yeah, if you gave me a gun right now, I'd do it again, right Glynnland?
Then I say shut another one.
Yeah, that's three, so that's.
Free so far.
You see these couple of bucks sitting here now, if.
Yeah, would you like to shake them another time?
Series All that to say, the early nineties were a little chaotic, so I'm comfortable saying I just don't know why it looks like no one was ever charged for those bombings in July of nineteen ninety. I can tell you for certain that ten members of the Order were arrested in the summer of nineteen ninety after that series
of bombings. One was released after he agreed to cooperate to escape and Leonard Wienendal, Darryl stopped Forth and Horse Cleans were in jail, originally held in connection with the bombings for violations of Section twenty nine of the Internal Security Act, and they seemed to stay in jail for
quite a while. No charges were ever actually filed against them for those bombs in South Africa, but while they were in custody, the newly independent nation of Namibia filed a petition to have them extradited to face trial for those murders.
In nineteen eighty nine.
The Truth and Reconciliation Report notes in passing that they were never interviewed by Namibian authorities during this time period. It doesn't say why, if they asked and weren't given permission, or if they just never asked. And I do have articles that were published in nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety one. That seemed to indicate they remained in continuous custody throughout
this time. But after those first few months, the articles stopped mentioning why they'd been arrested in the first place, and they only refer to the fact that they're still being held pending a determination about extradition. By July of nineteen ninety one, a year after they were arrested, both Vinendhal and Clem's were reportedly dangerously ill from an ongoing hunger strike, along with other incarcerated members they Order moor Folk.
They were political prisoners.
They said they'd only carried out the orders of the state. They can't be prosecuted for that, and they said they would continue their hunger strike until their demands were met. News stories show finnandl was on a hunger strike as early as January of ninety one and as late as August of ninety two, So that can't have been continuous.
Because he's still alive. But for about two years.
I can place him in jail and he's going on intermittent hunger strikes to protest this continued detention. In April of nineteen ninety two, a South African judge did rule that the Autio three could be extradited to Namibia. Stop Fourth and Venandal tried to appeal that ruling, but horse Glens wasn't really participating. He just kind of disappeared, and when they were all released on bond in December of nineteen ninety two to await this final ruling, he disappeared entirely.
It would take another four years, but in nineteen ninety six the Minister of Justice finally signed the extradition order. Horst Glen's was otherwise engaged by then. He was serving time for the plot will cover next week. But Darrell Stopped Fourth and Leonard Venendal were ordered to surrender themselves for extradition to Namibia, but they didn't. I can't figure
out where Darryl Stopped Fourth ended up. I tried, but I know exactly where Leonard Venandal is because just as he was due to present himself to the authorities to be extradited, he stole the car, crossed the border, and flew to the United Kingdom. Some reporting says he initially entered the United Kingdom using a false passport, probably because he was on inner Poll's most wanted list, and that he didn't try to claim asylum until after he was caught.
But it's unclear.
The man that Eugene Terreblanche used to affectionately refer to as as my little fanatic settled down with his family in Wisbeck, a town about one hundred miles north of London. He's the chair of the Wisbeck Rugby Club and his wife Tracy is the treasurer. The payday loan company he started after moving to England went into liquidation a few
years ago. I'm not really familiar with how anything works in the UK, and I really don't know how you could bankrupt a business that's pure extortionate profit, but that is what the paperwork appears to show. There's been a handful of articles over the years asking why Leonard Wienandal was allowed to enter and remain in the United Kingdom.
In two thousand and three, a reporter tracked him down in his home in Wisbeck, and Searchlight magazine would later report that Venandal allegedly attacked the reporter, grabbing him and slamming him up against a wall, shouting, you're going to find yourself in a very negative position. Subsequent attempts to write articles about Vnondal don't contain quotes from him. He and his wife are South African citizens born in South Africa.
There's no evidence he actually applied for political asylum. Corporate filings for his bankrupt paid a loan company list his nationality as South African, which, again, knowing nothing about British business, I assume means he did not seek British citizenship. So the UK is just willingly harboring a man who still wanted for two murders in Namibia. International extradition law can be a bit tricky, but ultimately, even if they couldn't or don't want to extradite him to Namibia, why is.
He still in the UK.
They could deport him back to South Africa and presumably the South African government would finish what they started in
nineteen ninety and send him to Namibia. In February of this year, as Donald Trump started parroting white nationalist talking points about South Africa, min Anddal made a flurry of online posts praising the American President, writing in one post last month, thank you President Donald J. Trump, not only for hearing the plight of my people, the boor africaners, but for boldly stepping up to stand with them in their hour of need and face of adversity.
When Jimmy Carter.
Died in December, Bvenandal posted, he just died, so we're supposed to pretend he's a saint. But Carter was instrumental in killing the free, prosperous state of Rhodesia. Like I said, I can't tell you whatever became of Darrell stop Fourth, but we'll pick back up next week.
With Horst Cleans.
He was released from the South African jail in nineteen ninety two, pending a decision on whether or not he could be extradited to Namibia. Unlike Stop Fourth in Fienandal, he doesn't seem to have participated in the legal battle to appeal that decision. He went underground, and he doesn't resurface again until nineteen ninety five, or when he's arrested again, this time after a shootout with the South African police
that left one of his young German mercenaries dead. And that's where we'll find the woman who set me down this long, strange path. It was Monica Huggett, who was graciously playing host for those foreign mercenaries. Weird Little Guys is a production of cool Zone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research, written, and recorded by me Holly Kunker. Our executive producers are Sophie Lichterman and Robert Evans. The show is edited by the wildly talented Bory Gigan. The theme music was composed
by Brad dickerd. You can email me at Weirdly Guys podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show. We have the listeners on the Weirdly Guy's subreddit, and this week you can apply to a post on the subreddit with any questions you'd like to have answered on an upcoming.
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And as always, don't post anything that's going to make you one of my weird Little guys.